The curious case of a hidden abbot and a besieged temple

Over the past month what is often cited as the world's largest Buddhist temple, on the outskirts of Bangkok, has been the scene of an extraordinary stalemate.

Police officers, in rows three deep, blocked the gates to the Wat Dhammakaya temple compound. Around the back, helmeted soldiers guarded alleyways, with some crawling through surrounding rice-fields. It was, they explained, a restricted military zone. Nobody was allowed inside.

The official reason for this siege was that the elderly abbot, Phra Dhammachayo, was wanted on multiple criminal charges related to a collapsed credit union and police believed he was being hidden inside the temple.

It was the largest security operation since the 2014 coup, involving thousands of troops and police officers, trying to flush him out. At one point it seemed certain they would storm the temple. Conservative supporters of the government made no secret of their wish to see what they view as a dangerously deviant Buddhist sect shut down.

But then, after three weeks, the operation was suddenly called off.

The police, after their third search through the sprawling complex, appeared to have been convinced that the abbot was no longer there. So the temple's passionate followers, who had been confined by the police in a nearby marketplace, were finally allowed to enter. Even now it remains unclear what exactly the police wanted to achieve.

Security threat?

As so often in Thailand, the official explanation is misleading. Allegations of financial malpractice have hung over the temple and its charismatic abbot for decades. They also hang over many other institutions and individuals in Thailand, many of whom are neither investigated nor prosecuted. To be pursued by the state with this much commitment suggests that much larger issues are at stake.

Wat Dhammakaya is controversial. The temple compound has been constructed on a vast scale, with a huge, open-air auditorium, centred on a gold, flying-saucer-shaped chedi (stupa). Other futuristic buildings are dotted around the site - it is quite unlike any other Buddhist temple. It does not hide the fact that it is perhaps the wealthiest religious sect in Thailand.

The auditorium can, we were told, accommodate up to one million people, and Dhammakaya is famous for its impressively choreographed mass-meditations, sometimes by candlelight.

The movement is big on discipline. Its stripped-down interpretation of traditional Buddhist thinking and practices, and the intense, shared experience of meditation, has proven very appealing to its urban, middle-class followers, whose intense devotion to Phra Dhammachayo has been likened by some to a form of cult worship. The emphasis on donations has prompted accusations that it has commercialised Buddhism.

So it should come as no surprise that a military government bent on restoring traditional values, and backed by ultra-conservatives who want to see the Buddhist clergy cleansed of corrupting, modern influences, dislikes Wat Dhammakaya. A former senator, Paiboon Nititawan, who has led the calls for the temple to be taken over, goes further and argues that it is a threat to national security.

"Phra Dhammachayo is ready to ask his followers to protect him, and those tens of thousands of people could easily turn into a mob. The abbot's followers insisted the police needed their permission to enter, and that they would only comply with their orders when Thailand is democratic again. This is like declaring autonomy, and denying the sovereignty of the state."